NIMHANS

Neurophysiology

Department of

 Neurophysiology 

The
Department of Neurophysiology was established in the year 1975 by Dr. T. Desiraju, who occupied the chair till his untimely death in 1992. He made invaluable contributions towards the establishment of the department in terms of infrastructure, development of teaching and research programmes. Dr. T.R. Raju is heading the Department from 1992 till date.

Objectives:

• To provide unique opportunities to carry out research in Neurophysiology.
• To offer training programmes in Neurophysiology leading to the award of M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees. Please see [Prospectus]
• To develop manpower towards technically demanding research programmes.
• To provide comprehensive teaching programmes in Neurophysiology and Neurobiology to postgraduate students of various other disciplines.
• To provide clinical facility in terms of investigation for both diagnostic and prognostic values of Autonomic and pulmonary functions in neuropsychiatry disorders

Human Resource Development

M.Phil and Ph.D. in Neurophysiology started as full time courses. In addition the guidance and teaching for all other courses like Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry and other related departments. Please see: [Prospectus]

Infrastructure

The department has well equipped laboratory facilities for research.

• For Electrophysiological investigations: Neurofax with polysmith software and polygraph, oscilloscope, Differential preamplifiers, Window discriminator with spike-2 analysis, etc. In addition, inverted microscope fitted with Narashige manipulator, Axon intacellular recording amplifier and a vibration free table are available for recording electrical activity from cultured neurons are also available.
• For behavioural studies: Stereotaxy, Stimulators/Lesion maker/Skinner box to carry out operant learning, T-maze for spatial learning, metal restrainers etc.
• HPLC with EC detector and Windchrome data station, Spectrophotometer, Spectroflurimeter for Biochemical studies.
• Tissue culture: Laminar flow hood, CO2 Incubator, Fluorescence and inverted microscopes.
• Histology: vibratome, freeze and sledge microtomes etc to carry out various histological procedures.
• For Clinical electrophysiological investigations: We have state of art autonomic lab to evaluate various role of the autonomic nervous system in health and disease. 16 channel data acquisition system to evaluate Heart rate Variability (HRV), conventional autonomic functions tests. Finometer to evaluate to Blood pressure variability (BPV) and Baroreceptor sensitivity (BRS).
  
  Pulmonary function unit, evaluate pulmonary functions in neuropsychiatric disorder. Sub clinical pulmonary dysfunction is very common in these disorders, Morbidity and mortality in neurological diseases are due to pulmonary dysfunction rather than disease per se, Hence evaluation of pulmonary function is an important diagnostic and a prognostic test.